mediablitz:cman: Those who were responsible for this should be put on trial.

Simple as that.

No trials and no one was fired.

.... none yet. For some reason, losing vast sums of money seems to get things moving far more effectively than mere documentation of the cruelty and injustice. Which is, of course, why such large monetary damages are awarded in the first place.

"The Doña Ana County Detention Center has a staff of 197 full-time positions, which include administrative, security, support and medical staff. In addition to county employees, there are 41 contract personnel and, at any given time, up to 67 volunteers." (emphasis mine)

Apparently CCA's lobbyists hadn't gotten their fingernails into that neck of the woods yet.

GAT_00:I'm not. This kind of thing isn't that uncommon. People with mental illnesses almost always end up in jails these days, thanks to the budget cutting mantra taking away mental institutions for the average person. Those mentally unstable people almost always end up in solitary confinement for years. They eventually get brain fried enough that they're taken to temp psych counseling and temporarily fixed, and then once they're good enough promptly thrown back in jail to cycle downwards again.

This is what you get when people only take the cheap route because stupid people think the solution to everything is tax cuts.

Does anyone else remember any other big news stories in the past few months about people with untreated mental illness that also had access to firearms?

Maybe when you stick a few people, organizations, or companies in the wallet they'll realize how important mental health care is. Sticking them in the heart with deaths of the innocent doesn't seem to be having much of an effect.

ArkAngel:Don't necessarily blame budget cuts for this, though those are a big part. During the late 70's and early 80's, there was a huge movement to reduce the amount of involuntary inpatient treatment for the severely mentally ill (commitment). This despite the fact that many of them need it. Nowadays it is far harder to do so, leaving prisons as the main place these people are confined to.

That rests solely at the feet of Ronald Reagan, the one President who you figure might want people with untreated mental illness to get help. Apparently he figured gun control was cheaper, hence his letter of support for the Brady Bill which specifically referenced his assassination attempt.

I love how the ACLU acted like it's the President's fault for signing the National Defense Authorization Act, something every president does every year, and failed to include his signing statement specifically condemning the provisions relating to indefinite detention. Had he vetoed it, not only would it have been overridden, but Republicans would be shouting that the soldiers' checks were late because Obummer the Great Muslismo wanted to protect "the terrorists".

I love how the ACLU acted like it's the President's fault for signing the National Defense Authorization Act, something every president does every year, and failed to include his signing statement specifically condemning the provisions relating to indefinite detention. Had he vetoed it, not only would it have been overridden, but Republicans would be shouting that the soldiers' checks were late because Obummer the Great Muslismo wanted to protect "the terrorists".

Why don't they point at Congress, who wrote the law?

I remember the Pre Clinton/Bush era when presidents took responsibility for their actions rather than making bad choices then casting all the blame on their pen.

What you do is explain to the nation why you aren't signing something, and if congress doesn't change the thing being signed then they'll have to ramrod it through without your consent. If its so important then they will, but you get to keep your honor and they get to eat the poll numbers.

When you sign something quickly and quietly you show tacit approval for everything in that bill.So far Obama has signed several things that are constitutionally questionable. Where he should have stood on principle, he's opted to keep things like the patriot act without so much as a fuss.

Fact is that being a constitutional scholar doesn't mean you support any of its ideals.

What happened to criminal negligence??Seriously.Why haven't those directly involved been charged?

I've spoken to a guy who has done solitary, I think he mentioned that international laws bar solitary more than 22 days, but his words so not sure.Anyways, he said by the 3rd day he was passing time by measuring the length/width of the cell using his hands.Pretty soon after that he was talking to himself.I think the human brain just needs the audio input.

Dona Ana County had been appealing the verdict ever since, refusing to pay Slevin.

I'm not really familiar with the process and what's involved but is it possible for the appeal to be denied and the award increased? eg., fark you, Dona Ana County, now it's $30 million?

If I was supreme ruler of the world I would pay the money out from taxes so the award is immediate but then fire everyone involved and sue for everything they have to recoup as much possible and then have them stand trial.

way south:I remember the Pre Clinton/Bush era when presidents took responsibility for their actions rather than making bad choices then casting all the blame on their pen.

like when we sold arms to iran so we could fund a war in central america and later when it was discovered Ronald Reagan stood up and on national TV said "the buck stops here!" and took full responsibility for it, and let the chips fall where they may. remember that?

C18H27NO3:If I was supreme ruler of the world I would pay the money out from taxes so the award is immediate but then fire everyone involved and sue for everything they have to recoup as much possible and then have them stand trial.

If I was supreme ruler, no large rewards would be issued like that.

Instead, people winning judgements would get the assets of those who wronged them. So, for example, a police officer is brutal to you. You are awarded 30% of his money and pension, not X million of tax dollars. The cop feels the burn. You don't get overpaid. All is right with the world.

This guy was kept in solitary for years. That's a hanging offense on the part of the responsible party, IMO, so after that person is hung their assets, including property titles and money and investments, would be handed off to you 100%. Joint assets from their spouse or business partners would be split based on the perp's level of ownership unless it can be proven the family member was part of the offense somehow.

I went through a period while at residence at university, voluntarily, where I didn't see or speak or to anyone or leave my room for about three or four days. It was winter and my sleep cycle was entirely messed up, such that I'd fall asleep a few hours before dawn and wake up at almost sunset. I did have access to a computer and an internet connection but I didn't communicate with anyone through it either. I also had a window facing an intersection. By I think, the third day, my ability to distinguish the real world from my dreams was comprised. Even though I like being alone and had a good degree of stimuli available, I still saw my sanity slipping.

Two whole years of almost complete isolation? I'd be long gone and likely, utterly broken.

The folks responsible for this deserve a special kind of hell made just for them.

It wouldn't be silly to compare the two. There are differences, yes; one had regular showers, one didn't. One had bedclothes, hell, even clothes period, one didn't. One has at least been arraigned, and knew why he was in jail and has contact with his attorney, one didn't.

However, the design of the cells isn't all that different; see the link I provided above to the jail's website. I'm not trying to say it's the same thing, but I think the main thing most people are horrified by is the psychological torture from solitary confinement. That is very similar to Manning's case. That sort of thing will drive sane man nuts so that he'll never be in shape for a trial.

timujin:While the treatment he received was truly horrible, I don't get how it began in the first place. How is it he was never processed through the system correctly? How is it he never saw a judge? Didn't the warden see his paperwork when he came in? Didn't he tell someone "Hey, I never got my one phone call"? Something??

It has to do with the minimal amount of "mental health care" given to prisoners in jails. Once he was determined by some random guard to be a "mental health patient" and assigned to solitary for his own protection, then he'd have gotten periodic visits from the doctor and/or psychiatric nurse. Even if these professionals really do care about their patients--and often they do--their "visits" are on the order of 90 seconds long maximum. They may only be something like the doctor looking through the food slot and saying "Hey, John, how are you feeling today? Still suicidal? Have you been taking your meds?" If John can't or won't reply, the doctor asks the guards how he's been doing, and then it's off to monitor the 795 other patients and inmates in the jail.

Even assuming the guards are not viciously hostile (and some of them aren't), they're not mental health professionals. They don't get the difference between someone who is really sick, and someone who is working the system (and there are plenty of those); so they can't or won't differentiate between John who is genuinely depressed and confused, and Steve who is malingering so he can get a few days out of GP and work detail. If Steve biatches about how his feet hurt, he gets scoffed at because they know he's faking; when John says the same thing--he gets scoffed at because all those nutjobs complain, right?

Throw in the awful record-keeping in any government agency, let the regular jail doctor go off on vacation or quit because he can't take the stress in the middle of the month; and next thing you know, our man John has been hiding under his blanket for two years without anyone really noticing. What's worse is that it wasn't really done maliciously, it was pure neglect and disregard for psychos in our system. (The refusal to pay, that was malicious) Nobody went out of their way to target this guy, and it happens, to a greater or lesser degree, to everyone who's mentally ill in the prison system.

doglover:That treason you've posted has human rights groups monitoring him often. He's being as well treated as possible. The other guy was in "the hole"

I see you're not familiar with what Manning was going through before he got transferred to Ft. Leavenworth. The human rights groups finally being made aware of the conditions he was held in for nearly a year was what finally got him transferred.

I can't decide based on the descriptions of the conditions of both incarcerations which would be worse. I'd probably go with the guy from TFA as worse, since Manning got better treatment a year after his arrest, and this guy endured some horrible sh*t for 22 months.

The measure of a society is how it treats its worst. Because if the sort of treatment either of these guys received is found to be okay based on the nature of their wrongdoing, it won't be long until lesser offenses are deemed worthy of that sort of treatment. I mean, hell, neither one of them have even been found guilty of a crime, right?

This is just unfathomable. I can't believe the jailers are acting like it had been a question of money, and somehow more funds will solve the problem. It doesn't take money for one person to have the common decency to give a call a judge and say "dude, we've got someone who should be in a mental health facility, not solitary." Or how about just giving him his constitutional right to a trial?! Why are none of those guards or wardens now incarcerated or even charged? How is this not kidnapping? farking fark. Unreal.

I wonder how he finally got out. Did one of the guards finally take pity on him and give him a phone call? Hook him up with a lawyer?

And why is the story about an attack on a ballet director in Moscow on the front page of the New York Times site, while there is nothing about this guy? This kind of seems like the more important issue...

I'm so pissed I can barely see straight. And the reason I'm pissed is because I realize this crap happens more often than any of us realize. I've got a few relatives that dropped out of sight in the past, and something like this could be the explanation. This guy sounds like most of us, a loner, maybe some temporary emotional upheaval, so he decides to make a change. He gets a helping hand from a friend, tries to relocate to make a better life, and then suddenly, his life got a change like nothing he ever expected.

And no amount of money can fix this. And the wrong people are on the hook to pay.

fnordfocus:Gyrfalcon: Nobody went out of their way to target this guy, and it happens, to a greater or lesser degree, to everyone who's mentally ill in the prison system.

Thing is, he never even saw a judge, so shouldn't really have been in the system for that long anyway.

Does your jail's policy say that mental illness trumps the right to arraignment?

It can.

There's a case of a Florida woman who was "on the bus" for three years and never received an arraignment. Similar to this guy, but not quite as horrific. I'd need to dig up the source, but it went something like this: She was arrested for some minor crime, and was Baker Acted for two weeks, so off she went to the mental ward. They bussed her up to the court, and during the interim between her arriving there and seeing the judge for her arraignment, she was off her meds long enough to destabilize. So back she went to the psych ward. They had her for six months (the maximum time someone can be held without seeing a judge) and back she went: Same situation. Back to the hospital again. Every time the hospital got her stable enough to see the judge and shipped her back, there was enough of a delay in her getting from the holding facility to the courtroom for her to go crazy again.

For three years. And she never even had an arraignment for the original crime. The three-year bus trip was going back and forth on the Baker Act committment to get her sane and stable enough to be brought to court for that. Finally I think someone caught on to what was happening and tried to intervene, but I don't know what happened next.

So yeah: If you're not mentally able to appear for the arraignment, they can keep you in confinement until you're able to appear. For as long as that takes. Because once you're in the system, they are responsible for your "health and well-being" and if someone decides you're "gravely disabled or a danger to yourself or others" they won't let you out. It's one of those Catch-22s that keep crazy people in the system going around and around like that Florida woman on the bus.

way south:I remember the Pre Clinton/Bush era when presidents took responsibility for their actions rather than making bad choices then casting all the blame on their pen.

I remember when people held Congress critters to the flames for passing bad legislation to begin with. Being in the Virgin Islands, I would think you would be more pissed at the Representative you can vote for instead of the President you can't. (And yes, I know, your Congress Critter only serves on committees and doesn't really vote anyhow.)

way south:What you do is explain to the nation why you aren't signing something

Well, he explained to the nation why he was.

way south:if congress doesn't change the thing being signed then they'll have to ramrod it through without your consent. If its so important then they will, but you get to keep your honor and they get to eat the poll numbers.

Honor and $2.75 will get you a cup of coffee in D.C. nowadays. Do you really think that Boehner would have taken the fall for the President failing to authorize military spending, thus placing our troops in harm's way, and delaying the paychecks of all of the servicemembers and their dependents? Really? He was given a crap choice to make. Republicans would have been crawling out of the woodwork to call him a terrorist sympathizer. On top of that, the plan was for Romney to win and when he was called out for using indefinite detention, they could lay the blame at the feet of Obama and the Democrats.

way south:When you sign something quickly and quietly you show tacit approval for everything in that bill.

Yes, and when you loudly proclaim that you're signing this under protest and you make a speech about what exactly you disagree with, the opposite is true.

way south:Where he should have stood on principle, he's opted to keep things like the patriot act without so much as a fuss.

On this I agree. More needs to be done to get rid of that crap. However, once again, it's hard to veto something that has already received enough votes to override your veto. It just makes you look ineffective. Congressional Democrats need to be hung out to dry for allowing that to come to his desk.

way south:Fact is that being a constitutional scholar doesn't mean you support any of its ideals.

Or it means you don't support a particular way it has been interpreted. I went to Bible school for a while; and I'd wager I know the Bible better than most people who call themselves Christian. However, that doesn't mean I agree with most people who believe it to be the unassailable literal word of God Almighty, although I do agree that we should be nice to each other and not murder and steal and lie to each other.

The Constitution is great on most principles, but it wasn't handed down from God Almighty, either. Check out the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sometime for what seems to be a better way of doing things for a modern world with better communication. And by the way, I don't think the PATRIOT act would hold up under it, either.

log_jammin:way south: I remember the Pre Clinton/Bush era when presidents took responsibility for their actions rather than making bad choices then casting all the blame on their pen.

like when we sold arms to iran so we could fund a war in central america and later when it was discovered Ronald Reagan stood up and on national TV said "the buck stops here!" and took full responsibility for it, and let the chips fall where they may. remember that?

I remember it.I also remember everyone shrugging off fast&furious (a similar program that began with noble goals but ran amuck under Obama's watch) as no big deal.

On top of wrongfully selling weapons, keeping prison camps open, and continuing the wars on terror and drugs, Obama has extended the drone strike campaign and expanded on the Bush era policies he railed against.

We're supposed to believe that his hands are tied on every damn front of his job?That He was too inexperienced to know there were tough choices ahead?

/And he's still got the better part of four years to go./I hope FARK doesn't get bent out of shape running defense the whole time.

I got a little agitated the other day and the cops were called (actually I totally lost my shiat). I got a 12 hr hold, charges dropped. First time for me and I was shocked at how every single officer suddenly thinks they are 20 feet tall when you've got cuffs on. Chests swell up, big crap-eating grins. You are the toddler and they are the abusive parent. And they don't listen to anything you say unless you act as if you're willing to lick their boots. Even on the way out as they lined a bunch of us guys up for release, they were threatening, to put us back in till the next shift came on, cussing us out, being blatantly racist to the non-english speakers, just hell-bent on reducing you as a human being.I suspect that they believe they're performing a public service by making the experience so terrible that no one wants to come back, but that's pure bull. They were getting off on treating people like garbage.

GAT_00:I'm not. This kind of thing isn't that uncommon. People with mental illnesses almost always end up in jails these days, thanks to the budget cutting mantra taking away mental institutions for the average person. Those mentally unstable people almost always end up in solitary confinement for years.

chrylis:GAT_00: I'm not. This kind of thing isn't that uncommon. People with mental illnesses almost always end up in jails these days, thanks to the budget cutting mantra taking away mental institutions for the average person. Those mentally unstable people almost always end up in solitary confinement for years.

Okay, chrylis: 1) grammatically your sentence made no sense, and 2) logically your first clause doesn't even come close to establishing a causal relationship with the second one. Back up, breathe deep, and come back when you're ready to try again.

lack of warmth:Broad River facility which the whole thing is named after.

I was actually in that jail for 3 days, and for stupid reason (on my end). I was a dumb kid and got a speeding ticket that I ignored paying, and when my license was suspended I had already moved to another address and failed to officially change it with DMV for notifications. So the next time I got pulled for speeding I was arrested.

Man, it was terrible. The tank they threw me in had feces and urine all over the floor, finally cleaned by another inmate from general population some 12 hours after me having been there. The toilet was in the middle of the damn room. One night, after I had finally managed to fall asleep, an aging crackhead was thrown in and proceeded to take the foulest, liquid-est diarrhea bomb while singing a Ray Charles song. Sounds funny as a CSB but trust me, it wasn't. However, at least he used the toilet and not the floor.

You know how they make jokes about asking what you're in for and you reply, "I took the tag off the mattress"? Well, that's pretty much how it was. Accused rapists, hardcore dope dealers, everyone thrown in the same room awaiting a judge. And there I was for not paying a farking traffic ticket and being dumb enough to keep driving. Not a DUI, no wives beaten, no nothing except being a stupid kid. Now I'm being stared down by a redneck accused of attempted murder.

This was in the 90s (I went to USC and got the hell out Carolina as soon as I graduated), so maybe improvements have been made. But that tank was worse than any drunk tank you see in the movies. Oh, and it was three days because, despite being a first (and last)-time offender, for some reason the judge ordered a $9,000 bond. My dad wouldn't help me, thinking he was teaching me a valuable lesson. In some ways he did but in most ways the 3 days of living with alleged rapists just pissed me off. I never understood why they didn't send me to a regular cell.